1. Field
Provided is a method of combination therapy for prevention and/or treatment of c-Met- and/or EGFR-induced diseases including co-administering a pharmaceutically effective amount of an EGFR antagonist and a pharmaceutically effective amount of an anti-c-Met antibody to a patient in need thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
c-Met, a typical receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) present at the surface of cells, binds to its ligand, hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) to promote intracellular signal transduction, thereby not only promoting the growth of cells but also being over-expressed in cancer cells so that it is widely implicated in cancer incidence, cancer metastasis, cancer cell migration, cancer cell penetration, angiogenesis, etc.
In general, common cancer therapies include surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or a combination thereof. These therapies have significant limits. For example, surgery may not completely remove newly-generated tissues, and may not be used for treatment of several disseminated neoplastic conditions such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Radiotherapy may be effective only when neoplastic tissues exhibit higher sensitivity to radiation than normal tissues, and may cause serious side effects.
Although various anticancer drugs may be used in chemotherapy, almost all anticancer drugs are toxic and frequently cause dangerous side effects. In addition, many tumor cells exhibit resistance to various anticancer drugs used in chemotherapy, which becomes a serious obstacle in anticancer therapy.
To counteract the side effects and decrease resistance, studies relating to combined use of two or more anticancer drugs are being actively progressed. Since a combination therapy may achieve synergistic effects of two or more anticancer drugs, combination therapies are becoming a main trend in recent anticancer therapies.
Accordingly, there is a demand for development of a combination therapy for achieving increased synergistic effects and decreased resistance.